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During roller coaster of a season, Twins try to maintain consistent attitude

betsy helfand, pioneer press
·3 min read

There’s streaky teams and then there’s the 2024 Minnesota Twins.

Rocco Baldelli has been around plenty of streaky teams. But this one?

“This is next-level stuff,” the Twins manager said. “We’re taking this to the next level.”

There was a five-game losing streak. There was a 12-game winning streak. And now they’ve won two straight games after dropping seven in a row, the franchise’s longest losing streak since 2018.

But while the results have been about as inconsistent as they come, the Twins have been trying to keep things consistent in their preparation and attitude. You hear a lot of phrases like “even-keeled” and “not getting too high and not getting too low,” around these Twins.

Exhibit A:

“It is a roller coaster, something that I haven’t experienced in my career,” center fielder Byron Buxton said. “… It’s just going with the ups and downs, but making sure you stay even-keeled.”

The latest run of poor results was in large part a result of an offensive slump that had consumed the team. The Twins scored 12 runs over the course of seven games. They snapped out of that losing streak by scoring 10 runs in one game.

“It feels like it’s the perfect storm of when we’re playing good, we’re doing every facet of the game right, and on these streaks, when we’re not, we’re kind of not doing anything right,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “So far this year, it’s been all or nothing on all sides.”

And when that’s happening, it can be a struggle to maintain the same consistent attitude.

The Twins held a players-only meeting after Monday night’s loss, a 12-3 drubbing by the Washington Nationals.

That player leadership, Baldelli said, is what helps a team maintain the attitude necessary to pull through difficult stretches.

Baldelli specifically pointed out two team leaders — shortstop Carlos Correa, whom he said is the same whether the team is winning or losing, and Kyle Farmer, whom he said is “out there yelling and doing his normal stuff that he does with all the guys” — as helping keep the clubhouse in a good mental space.

“What you don’t like to see is when guys are all changing and acting funny and timid and sitting in their lockers and things like that,” Baldelli said. “I don’t see really much of (that). I think our guys have handled everything pretty well. … It has not been the … smoothest first two months of the season for us, but the guys have been — they’ve been OK.”

And it’s important, too, starting pitcher Pablo López said, to keep the confidence level up. That can be hard to do in the midst of longer losing streaks because winning is what breeds confidence.

But as much of a struggle as their latest losing streak was, López said they still knew they had the talent within the clubhouse that “is good enough to go against any team.”

“When you lose, that confidence starts dropping down and down, but you can’t change who you are, you can’t change what you believe in,” López said. “If you believe that this is what you need to do to get ready, regardless of the results, that’s what you need to be doing.”

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